KDE 3.1 New Feature Guide
(cont'd)

Personal Information Management

Personal Information Management

Email Security.
On the PIM front, the email client
(KMail)
has gained several important privacy and security enhancements -
namely S/MIME, PGP/MIME and X.509v3 support. This work has been done
in successful collaboration with the
Ägypten project,
an IT security project being
developed
under contract by the German government
(screenshot).
Moreover, OpenPGP support has been
enhanced, such as enabling encrypting with a different key for each
addressee.

Calendar Exchange Integration.
The calendar / scheduling application
(KOrganizer) features
a number of compatibility and feature improvements:

A new plugin for accessing calendar data from an Exchange 2000 server,

Support for iMIP,
an industry standard used by Outlook, Lotus Notes and
Evolution) integration, including group-scheduling functions for todos
and events.

Improved support for the industry-standard
iCalendar
calendaring and scheduling protocol.

Address Book Standards with LDAP and vCard.
The address book library (libkabc),
used throughout KDE, has a number of important improvements:

A new control module for configuring multiple resources,
including the industry-standard
LDAP resources.

An LDAP-aware email address input field.

Complete support for the industry-standard
vCard, as well as
new vCard 2.1 import.

A new versatile plugin mechanism.

An optional binary database format for quick access to large
address books.

The principal address book application (KAddressbook) has
gained the ability to fetch contact information from one or more
LDAP servers, print contact information, access multiple address books,
and import / export of industry-standard vCards
(screenshot).
In addition, the user interface has received a number of usability
enhancements, such as a "jump bar" for quick alphabetized access to
entries and entry categories.

Palm Integration.
The Palm OS-based PDA integration (KPilot) provides a number
of new conduits, including Time,
AvantGo
and new KDE address book (KAddressBook) conduits.

Looking Ahead.
While not included in the 3.1 release,
the next quantum jump in KDE's
email / groupware architecture is scheduled for KDE 3.2,
when a completely copy-lefted, integrated groupware system is scheduled
to ship with KDE.
Named Kontact
(screenshot), the project will integrate the major
KDE PIM applications,
and also incorporate the achievements of the
Kroupware project. Kroupware,
which is being developed under contract with an agency of the German government,
aims "to provide a Free Software groupware solution accessible with Windows
running Outlook and GNU/Linux running KDE clients."
More about this project, and some additional screenshots, can be found on
dotsy, the KDE news
site.